Gluten-free baking can be discouraging for those who only want to dabble at it: you often dive into a tempting recipe only to discover it calls for three different types of flour and various thickening gums. It sounds daunting, and you don’t necessarily want to invest in ingredients that will just go rancid in your kitchen cabinet.

“Naturally” gluten-free chocolate cookies

I am more attracted to naturally gluten-free baked goods that use “regular” ingredients — though I recognize the notion is highly personal. But in the case of these gluten-free chocolate cookies, they can be put together by hand in no time at all, from just four easy-to-find ingredients: almond flour, cocoa powder, sugar, and butter.

You’ll be wowed by these divine little sablés — crisp as you bite in, then meltingly tender on the tongue, not too sweet but strongly chocolate-y, with roasted notes and the touch of salt that changes everything.

These gluten-free chocolate cookies are a recipe idea I’ve had on the mind for a long time, and I recently came around to developing it, to great success. Knowing that they are based on such a simple formula, you may be just as wowed as I was tasting these divine little sablés — crisp as you bite in, then meltingly tender on the tongue, not too sweet but strongly chocolate-y, with roasted notes and the touch of salt that changes everything.

Though I generally use a silicone baking mat for cookies, I find it more convenient to use a good parchment paper here. I use it to roll up the dough into slice-and-bake logs, wrap them up for setting in the freezer, and slide the cookies onto a rack super gently at the end of baking — gluten-free cookies are typically fragile when still warm, so they need to cool completely undisturbed before they’re all crisped up and ready for action.

Tell me everything!

Do you also feel put off by recipes that call for two kinds of gums and various specialty flours? Did a particular recipe or circumstance convince you to give in and build a gluten-free pantry?

PS: Here’s an index of my gluten-free recipes. And if you decide to invest in a bag of almond flour (I buy it by the kilo at G. Detou in Paris), I can offer many more recipes to make good use of it.

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If you’ve been feeling blah about the official arrival of fall this week, I have a lovely and easy recipe to make you feel every shade of happy about the shift of seasons and the new produce it brings.

{Related: Never sure what’s in season when? Grab my free seasonal produce calendar right this minute!}

Today’s recipe is a simple dish of noodles dressed in a peanut sauce, and tossed with garlicky kale and sautéed mushrooms.

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I discovered chokladbollar, or Swedish chocolate balls, during my blissful trip to Stockholm last month.

The city is peppered with cosy coffee shops that sell coffee, yes, but also pretty little sandwiches, and the kind of wholesome home-style sweets that go so well with a steaming cup of something.

And though each place had a selection all its own, I soon identified a few classics you could count on finding pretty much everywhere: kardemummabullar, the Swedish cardamom rolls (also available in a cinnamon version, and sometimes chocolate or blueberry!), and chokladbollar, ping-pong-sized chocolate balls coated in grated coconut.

What makes chokladbollar especially seductive, beyond the simple presence of, you know, chocolate and coconut, is that they’re made with ground oats. This gives them a lightly nubby texture, and infinitely pleasing nutiness.

It was love at first bite in a herregud* kind of way. I ate my fill while in Stockholm, and couldn’t get them out of my head once home in Paris. I researched the recipes available out there, created a comparison spreadsheet (yes, I am that kind of person), and found that most of them called for impressive amounts of sugar and butter.

And so, I set out to create a version of my own using coconut oil more moderately instead (nothing against butter, you can use that instead if not vegan), and just the right dose of sugar to round out the other flavors.

Hey, want to see a video?

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This is one of those recipes I’m super excited to have added to my repertoire: it’s very (very) easy, it can be whipped up from 100% pantry ingredients, and once it’s on the table it tastes and feels like a much more sophisticated dish, the kind that makes you sigh with pride and content and say, “We eat pretty well around here, don’t we?”

It started out as the 20-minute fish curry in Meera Sodha’s excellent book, Made in India, Cooked in Britain, which I own in its British edition and have used multiple times with great success. Her original recipe is for an Indian-style curry without the coconut milk, but after several iterations in my kitchen it has taken on Southeast Asian flavors (lemongrass, basil or cilantro, lime juice) that make it a little bit Thai as well.

An amazingly easy fish curry

I apologize to purists of either cuisine in advance, but the result is a fine curry, richly favorful and clean-tasting, that does really well on its own or served over rice. My current preference goes to this sticky rice, which I throw into the rice cooker Maxence talked me into buying despite my reluctance (rice cooks just fine in a regular pan on the stove! we don’t need a specialized appliance!), and I now love and cherish (perfect rice! every time! no need to watch or time or anything!).

Since settling on this wonderful fish curry formula, I now make sure I keep on hand a can of coconut milk, a jar of whole peeled tomatoes, and fish fillets in the freezer at all times (the spices, onions, and fresh ginger I always have around), and I throw the curry together almost on a weekly basis. Although I’ve only made it for our family meals so far, it is without a doubt a company-worthy dish, one you could even pull off for a weeknight dinner party, possibly followed by this vanilla-roasted pineapple.

Join the conversation!

What’s the most recent addition to your roster of easy, weeknight-friendly recipes? We all need more of those so please share!

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